Deadliest Sea (17 page)

The 60 Jayhawk used a method known as helicopter in-flight refueling (HIFR) to gas up from the cutter
Munro
.
Photograph courtesy of cutter
Munro
/USCG

A Coast Guard rescue swimmer examines an empty life raft from the
Alaska Ranger
on the afternoon of March 23, 2008. The swimmer punctured and sank the raft so that it would not offer false hope to fellow searchers.
Photograph by Dan Lytle/USCG

This photograph was taken from inside the 60 Jayhawk as it hovered beside the
Munro
during HIFR.
Photograph by Byron Cross/USCG

The
Munro
’s commander, Captain Craig Lloyd, at the Coast Guard dock in Dutch Harbor.
Photograph by Charles Homans/AP

The FCA trawler
Alaska Warrior
at dock in Dutch Harbor.
Photograph by Ed Cook

Members of the Marine Board of Investigation, which was convened to determine the cause of the sinking of the
Alaska Ranger,
were led on a tour of the
Warrior
a few days after the disaster. Pictured here are Coast Guard Captain Mike Rand (
left)
and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Investigator Liam LaRue (
second from right)
.
Photograph by Sara Francis/USCG

The
Alaska Ranger
’s used survival suits were laid out for examination by the Marine Board members.
Photograph by Sara Francis/USCG

The investigators examine the
Warrior’s
trawl deck, which is crowded with fishing nets, lines, and buoys.
Photograph by Sara Francis/USCG

Captain Pete Jacobsen’s daughter, Karen, and the
Alaska Ranger
’s long-time cook, Eric Haynes, at the Seattle Fishermen’s Memorial on Easter morning, 2009.
Photograph courtesy of the author

Alaska Warrior
Chief Engineer Ed Cook photographed one of the
Warrior
’s watertight doors tied open at sea on April 29, 2008—just over a month after the
Alaska Ranger
tragedy. A plaque bolted to the door reads “Keep Closed at Sea.”
Photograph by Ed Cook

Most deaths that occur within the first half hour of cold-water immersion are not true hypothermia. Rather, they are due to panic and the subsequent problems associated with people’s inability to control their breathing or their thinking. Even in the coldest waters, hypothermia usually takes at least half an hour to kill. Nonetheless the majority of drowning deaths in cold water are in fact a consequence of hypothermia. A victim goes through the states of hypothermia to the point of losing consciousness, then drowns because he can’t keep his head out of the water.

Regardless of survival equipment, some people are inherently more apt to survive than others. Both anecdotal and laboratory evidence supports the thesis that increased body weight boosts the likelihood of survival. It makes intuitive sense that, as Steinman writes, “smaller adults generally cool faster than larger adults and tall, lanky individuals cool faster than short, stout individuals…. Fat is a very efficient insulator against heat loss.”

Some of the most-repeated “miracle” stories of long-term survival in Alaskan waters involve individuals who were heavier than average, and a 1985 study found that the effect is, in fact, significant. Very thin subjects in the tenth percentile of skinfold thickness (a measure of subcutaneous fat) wearing light clothing in 41°F water were found to cool at
nine
times the rate of their portliest peers (those in the ninetieth percentile of skinfold thickness).

E
VERY TIME HE ROSE UP TO THE TOP
of a wave, Evan Holmes could see other lights spread out in the ocean. He could hear people yelling. Then he would sink down into another trough and
whoosh,
the yells would disappear along with the lights. The crashing waves were so loud, they blocked it all out. Evan was on top of a swell when he saw his ship for the last time. The
Alaska Ranger
was stern-down in the sea, the bow pointed straight toward the sky.
Whoosh,
Evan plunged down with a wave. The next time he rose up, the
Ranger
was gone.

Evan had been in the water for maybe an hour when he saw someone floating toward him and P. Ton, who was still holding on to Evan’s legs. When the guy got closer, Evan could see that it was Kenny Smith.

“Kenny! Come on, let’s make a chain!” Evan yelled over the crash of the waves.

The factory manager knew that the other guys hadn’t been to the safety course in Seattle like he had. Now, the lessons he learned there were paying off. Evan showed Kenny how to link together, with one man’s legs wrapped around the other’s waist.

Both Kenny and P. Ton were smaller than Evan. They both seemed colder and in worse spirits. “We’re not gonna make it,” Kenny kept saying.

“Keep calm!” Evan yelled. “If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna give you overtime!”

After a while, the men saw someone else floating toward them in the water. Kenny grabbed the man’s suit.

“Evan, man. Evan! This guy is dead. He’s dead, he’s gone,” Kenny screamed.

Evan touched the body for a second. It was lifeless. “Oh my God,” he said. “Shit.”

Kenny couldn’t tell who the guy was. Someone small. Evan let go, and the body floated quickly away.

I
T WAS FREEZING INSIDE THE
J
AYHAWK HELICOPTER
. In the more than an hour since the crew had taken off from St. Paul, they hadn’t been able to turn on the heat inside the aircraft. The helo’s heating system and its deicing system both use the same hot air off the engines. The night was cold enough that all the heat had to be used to keep the engines on anti-ice.

Under normal conditions, the Jayhawk burns about 1,000 pounds of fuel an hour (the equivalent of 150 gallons) and the deicer increases that to 1,100, 1,200, even 1,300 pounds depending on weather conditions. To run the heat and the deicer at the same time, they would have had to bring in another generator, which would burn fuel even faster. Heat was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

Luckily, the men were warmly dressed. All four of them wore bright orange, fire-retardant dry suits, the required uniform for Coast Guard helicopter crews operating over waters colder than 70°F. With snug rubber seals at the neck and wrists, the suits are designed to keep rescuers dry, even if they end up completely submerged. The material, though, breathes just enough to keep the wearer from feeling swampy after the inevitable hours in the air. Rescue swimmer O’Brien Starr-Hollow wore an extra layer of synthetic long johns beneath his dry suit. He was the only one of the four men, after all, who planned to be getting in the water.

As they neared the scene, Starr-Hollow disconnected his flight helmet from the Jayhawk’s Internal Communication System (ICS) and started to gear up. He checked the seals on his wrists and neck, making sure there wasn’t any fabric breaking the secure bond between suit and skin. He pulled on his 7mm-thick neoprene hood and a neon yellow helmet, similar to those
worn by white water kayakers. He checked that the rest of his gear was ready to go. Right before entering the water, he’d replace his fire-retardant flight gloves with neoprene hyper-stretch wet gloves and pull his fins on over his work boots, which he wore over the dry suit’s built-in booties. Last would be his mask, with a mini dive light attached, and snorkel.

During flight, the rescue swimmer was responsible for backing up the pilots by keeping a constant eye on the radar and fuel burn, and for running the radios from the back of the plane. There was a guard established over the HF radio. Every fifteen minutes, Starr-Hollow would check in with COMMSTA Kodiak, which would record the helo’s GPS position, direction, and speed. If the aircraft went down, COMMSTA would have a reasonably good idea of where to search for survivors. Starr-Hollow was also responsible for backing up the pilots on altitude—if they started descending, he’d be calling out the altitude over the ICS. It was a life-or-death job in whiteout conditions with twenty-foot breaking waves.

T
HE RESCUERS ALL KNEW THE STORIES
of aircraft that had been taken out by a rogue wave. It had happened in the Bering Sea just a few years before, during a rescue attempt off a grounded Malaysian cargo ship, the
Selendang Ayu
. A Coast Guard aircrew and a helicopter full of survivors was batted out of the sky by a monster swell, unseen until it was too late. The flight crew had all been wearing helmets and dry suits. Most important, they’d been trained to escape a submerged capsule.

It’s part of the standard training for every Coast Guard airman. The Navy has eight facilities around the country equipped with “helo-dunkers,” mock helicopter pods suspended on a crane above the deep end of a pool. During their initial training, and
every six years afterward, each member of a Coast Guard flight crew is sent to one of the Navy facilities to practice escaping a downed chopper. The crane lowers the dunker to the surface of the pool, and the rescuers, dressed in full flight gear, climb inside and buckle themselves in. Then, the dunker is raised above the water, dropped—and spun. A helicopter’s rotors and gears make the machine top-heavy; in a crash into water, the aircraft is likely to flip upside down. The rescuers are trained to open the aircraft doors and push out the windows
before
the helo hits water, if possible. Once they’re under, they learn to unbuckle themselves from an inverted position and pull out a tiny scuba tank known as the HEED, for helicopter emergency egress device (all members of the crew fly with the soda-can-size air bottle in a pocket).

The crew members’ most crucial lesson is to keep constant contact with a reference point on the inside of the submerged aircraft, and to travel hand-over-hand to get themselves out a window or door and up to the surface. Let go and all sense of up and down is lost, Coasties are taught. After mastering escape with the air bottle, the crew learns to escape while wearing blacked-out goggles. Finally, they do it with blacked-out goggles and
without
supplemental air. They practice holding their breath for longer than they thought possible. They learn not to panic when the worst happens. And when it does, they sometimes survive.

In that December 2004
Selendang Ayu
disaster, the training worked: Each member of the helicopter crew got out safely. Six of the seven sailors they’d just plucked off the seven-hundred-foot freighter were killed in the crash.

E
VAN
H
OLMES HAD BEEN SHAKEN UP
by the dead body. He was cold, and he had a little water in his suit. When he lifted his
arm, he could feel a trickle of icy water run down toward his chest. Evan was worried about hypothermia setting in. Crap, we’ve been floating around for quite a while, he thought. He couldn’t stop shivering. The other guys seemed just as bad—maybe worse.

Kenny and P. Ton had been real quiet ever since they saw the body. Evan tried to think of a song to sing. He should try to keep them all occupied with something other than the fact that they didn’t know if they were going to make it out of the Bering Sea. But for the life of him, he could
not
think of single song.

“Hey, Holmes, I’m not gonna make it,” Kenny was saying.

“Yeah, you are,” Evan told him. “You are.”

Evan wasn’t a religious guy. To him, it seemed a little selfish to start praying just for his own life at a time like this. He looked up into the dark sky. Here’s the deal, God, Evan bartered. Give us one more sunrise. We want to see the sun one more time. If I’m going to be floating around in this ocean like a Popsicle, I want to see the sun rise just once more.